Aviva's+Page

Here are two resources from this class which I enjoyed exploring:

Information is listed in the following order: What is it How to integrate into the classroom/curriculum Tips and Techniques

1 - Delicious Bookmarking site: Great for organizing all of your favorites, so you can keep track of which site does what (like an annotated bibliogrpahy, but for websites). Also a good site for finding/viewing favorite sites of other educators...based on the number of people in your field who tag a site you can get an idea of how widely used and/or effective it might be. Based on the number of tags a site has, you can also get a sense of its uses.

I can keep my delicious account public so that my tudents coud use it. If I wanted to teach my tident what soem of the best web-baed tools are for studying tanach, for example, I could create a webquest where they would need to answer questions (such as  what is the best webite for X) by looking at the sites I have listed under specific tags on my account. In addition, I could just give students a more open-ended reearch project, and offer my delicious account as one resource for them to find website which can help them with the assignment.

Two tips:

1 - Use tag bundles. This will allow for cross-referencing of sites, where, for example, all site with a tag of hebrew can appear together under that heading. 2 - Be consistent with tag names. So, for example, if every time you have a site that has to do with Hebrew you label with the tag hebrew, you hould not one time tag a site with hebrew language. These two site may not show up in the same tag bundle.

Mindmeister:

Mind-mapping tool. Mindmeister is a super-cool tool that I moderately tech-savy educator could use (and assign to students to use). As I understand it, a mind-mapping tool such as Mindmeister offer a visula/grpahic representation, on a single page, of a complex set of theoretical relationships. For example, on the Language Development mind map, you can view the full spectrum of topics in an intro. linguistic course, divided by subheadings (for example, Syntax, Phonetics, Early-Childhood, Atypical Development, etc. Based on my particular needs, I can close or leave open certain branches of the map. In addition, if my focus area is a particular branch of the subject, I can enlarge just that piece of the map and read in detail about all of the subtopics listed under that branch. The mot wonderful mid maps I have seen actually have hyperlinks to subtopics which will take you to other web pages that will give you much more information on that topic. For example, on the Western Philosophy mind map, if you click on the name of a given philosopher (for example, John Locke) it could take me to a number of other websites that discuss this philosopher.

A tool like mindmeister is excellent for all student, but expecially for visual/grpahic learners. It is the kind of tool that I could see using once a week as a full clas to create a class-wide mind-map of our coure as we move through it. Alternatively, I could assign the creation of a mind-map for a unit or whole course as an assessment, asking students to create their own and break it down as they see fit, including as many subcategories as possible. As an extension of such an assignment, I think I could ask students to look at the map of one other tudent in the lcass, give specific feedback on what was/not helpful, what changes they might make, and share two new fact they learned from hyperlinks on that map.

Tips and Techniques:

I have not actually made a mind-map yet, although I would like to. I think you need to have quite a bit of comfort with technology to be able to make a mind-map well. I certainly recommend making a mind-map on the largest possible computer screen available to you -- I assume this would definitely ease the construction process. It is also my impression that it probably takes a good deal of time to construct a well-made, well thought out mind-map, so I think it is worthwhile for a large topic area (for example: Sefer Bamidbar), but not for a smaller segment of content. I think it would also require that you have all of your factual information and links ready in advance. Finally, I would recommend reviewing the many samples of miond-maps on the Mindmeister and other similar ites to see samples of a variety of uccesful maps, and to be sure no-one had done one on your topic already that you could use or adapt.

__SMARTBoard, Stupid Kid!__ SMARTBoard technology is all the rage these day: teachers talk about how easy and interactive it makes things, and students love to play on it, or get called up to the baord to experiment with the various colors and tool it offers. Busince the first time I laid my eye on one, I have bben wondering  does SMARTBoard really help kids learn better? I have yet to be convinced that it does.

On one web blog hosted by CafePress called //This Thing I Call My Life// the author describe an interactive music lesson that was so good, she thought her preence was entirely superfluous, as she wrote the students probably didn't even need me there. The author offered no examples or description of how the SMARTBoard provided interactive learning opportunities, but what was clear was that the technology had supplanted the need for a teacher: this is clearly a case of technology being used to replace interactive human learning, and ca case of a teacher not undestanding the supplemental role the technology must play if real learning is to take place.

There are numerous stories of the incredible things SMARTBoard technology has achieved for various students: On the website donorschoose.org, there is mention of students who are late or mi clas, yet are able to keep up because of notes posted to a website froma SMARTBoard that the teacher took during class. But, do we want to add to the incentive tudent already have for being late or absent? Do we want students to be more passive in their thinking/information sorting during class time since they know the teacher's notes will be available to them after the class? Are we really sharpening the cognitive skills of our students when we do not force them to sort out information independently in real time?

It is clear that having SMARTBoard technology as a tool is a good thing: One web site I looked at reported the incredible benefit that visually impaired students said they gained by using SMARTBoard technology both in and out of the classroom. It seems clear to me, though, that how, when, and for what purpose a teacher will use SMARTBoard technology has become as importnat as any other component of her lesson. For example, if I am going to use this technology to teach a number of biblical verse, I first need to thik about at least oneother way I could achieve my goal, and then discern the specific benefits that the technology offers that make using it the right choice. Much as teacher are expected to be emi-experts in their disciplines to teach them, so too, I think teacher need serious, formal training in what SMARTBoard can do and how. The key with SMARTBoard, as with all classroom tools is to use it effectively, to achieve discrete goals which the technology will achieve best. If we are not careful to implement thee many and seductive new toys/tools, instead of smart or smarter kids, we might be left with a SMARTBoard and stupid kids!